New Zealand war metal band Heresiarch announced their upcoming record, Death Ordinance, on their Facebook page. The artwork is by Misanthropic-Art and the album will be released by Dark Descent Records later this year. Heresiarch’s prior releases, Hammer of Intransigence and Waelwulf, were noted as some of The Best Underground Metal Releases of 2011 and 2014 respectively.

Morbid Angel (Trey Azagthoth and Steve Tucker) have finally found a new drummer: Scott Fuller of Annihilated and Abysmal Dawn. Instead of Morrisound, the band is currently recording a new album with Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal) at his Mana Studios and the drum tracks have been laid down. Expect digital, plastic sounding sterility.

Suffocationentered the studio last weekend to start recording their new album. Hopefully it will be better than Pinnacle of Bedlam and the drum tracks will not be EZdrummer samples. After their comeback, the Long Island brutal death metal legends have notoriously rehashed their past riffs with new melodic fills in simpler speed metal structures.

Summoning has been working on their latest studio album for about a year now. More recently (although admittedly some months ago), they spoke to a writer at Darkview about their plans for the upcoming album. So far, the band members continue to emphasize a degree of continuity with the style established on Old Morning’s Dawn, ranging from its more depressive atmosphere to the reuse of material originally intended for that album. On the other hand, Silenus suggests that some aspects of the music (like the melodic lines) may end up more like older albums, such as Oath Bound and Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame. Regardless of what material it takes after, it’s likely that Summoning’s next album will be of some merit, and we’ll certainly update you on it once we have more concrete information.

In a review with SkullNBones.com, Overkill’s frontman (Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth) revealed that their next studio album is intended to come out by October of 2016. This might be something for fans of old speed metal to look forwards to, especially if the band continues in their current vein. While Overkill always tended towards the earlier, more punk inflected forms of the subgenre, they pulled it off in a versatile fashion with some room for experimentation and elaboration, as evidenced by their famous work in the late 1980s. Overkill also has recently released a box set of their middle period work; entitled Historikill: 1995-2007, it showcases the band repeatedly trying to reinvent themselves for a new era by imitating the more rock-like (Pantera-like) material their genre inspired. It also stops short of the band finally succeeding in this regard with Ironbound, which proficiently built off their early work and made it onto this site’s best of 2010 list.

Following the success of their recent South American tour, British heavy metal band Satan are set to release their new studio album ‘Atom By Atom’ this October on Listenable records. The LP features ten songs written by the band (including a collaboration with Angel Witch’s Kevin Heybourne). The tracklist runs as follows:

“Old school” Swedish death metal band Wombbath will release Downfall Rising, its first album in 22 years. The album will be released jointly in North America on Dark Descent and Pulverised August 21. Pulverised will release the album in all other territories on August 7. Downfall Rising follows 1993 album Internal Caustic Torments.

Downfall Rising was mixed by Jeramie Kling and mastered by James Murphy (Disincarnate, ex-Death, ex-Testament, ex-Obituary, etc). The revampedWombbath lineup is anchored by sole remaining member/guitarist Håkan Stuvemark (Skineater) , and also includes vocalist/bassist Jonny Petterson (Ashcloud, Syn:drom), guitarist Al Riglin, and drummer Henrik Åberg. Drumming on the album itself was performed by Infernaeon/The Absence member Jeramie Kling. Taylor Nordbert (Infernaeon) guested on guitar as well.